MissCreative's journey to financial freedom!

MissCreative

Happy Tuesday afternoon everyone

Changed my mobile contract from £16.20 a month with O2 to £5 a month with ID Mobile.
If only I could get DH to change his mobile bill from £40! :eek:

Also, the energy switch that should start on 25th August with Scottish Power will save us over £30 a month :j

Need to take some photos of items to put on Gumtree tonight. I'm going to try and sell 2 pairs of Sony TV 3D glasses, a fitbit and bands, a giant clock, a rice cooker and a curtain rail. Hoping to make around £80 or so from that
Anything we make will most likely go into the holiday pot as we've been looking at holidays in March 2017 - either skiing in France or visiting family friends in Dubai (I'm all for Dubai!).

MissCreative

Still waiting for my old number to come across to my new sim card so that's annoying, but hopefully it will be completed by this evening.

Spent a few pounds on a top up shop yesterday as we were in the middle of cooking dinner and discovered we had no pasta left! DH got some eggs and flour as well so he could have crepes this morning

Had a nice swim this morning at the gym, and I'm really looking forward to carb-heavy leftovers for lunch

DH was off to the shops bright and early this morning to pick up No Man's Sky (PS4 game), which he hasn't stopped talking about for the last 3 months or more. I'm not 100% I didn't marry a 15 year old :rotfl:
He got the money for the game for his birthday so he won't have to spend any of his personal budget today.
I should be having a NSD myself :T

MissCreative

Had a lovely girl's weekend and didn't go over my £50 budget (that included all meals, taxis, drinks, activities etc) so did food shopping with DH yesterday after work and had a mini meal prepping session.

Shopping included:
1 courgette
Spring onions
3 cooking apples
1 broccoli
Small piece of fresh ginger
3 peppers
Heck chicken sausages
2 pots of houmous
Soy milk
Frozen green beans
4 frozen tikka chicken breasts
Basmati rice
1 bottle of sparkling water
Marmite
Orange juice
Pitta breads
Pasta

That all came to just over £20. Our friend is going to pay us for 3 meals this week, so that will be £7.50 off the total shop, making it more like £12.50 :j
What's annoying is DH's marmite cost £4.50 - almost a a quarter of the total!

We have my sister and her boyfriend visiting this weekend so we'll be having a few meals out.

This week's meals are:
Yesterday: Leftover chickpea and vegetable curry, and rhubarb and apple crumble with ice cream
Tuesday: toast/protein ice cream -- houmous, pittas and tomatoes/chicken sausages, sweet potato, broccoli and green beans -- creme fraiche pasta, and rhubarb and apple crumble with ice cream
Wednesday: toast/protein ice cream -- houmous, pittas and tomatoes/chicken sausages, sweet potato, broccoli and green beans -- meatballs and pasta/tofu in a peanut sauce with vegetables
Thursday: toast/protein ice cream -- houmous, pittas and tomatoes/leftover tofu and vegetables -- pizza night
Friday: toast/protein ice cream -- tuna sandwich and crisps/leftover tofu and vegetables -- BBQ pork and pineapple fried rice
Saturday: toast/protein ice cream -- burrito bowl from Tortilla -- ???
Sunday: toast/protein ice cream -- ??? -- spaghetti bolognese from the freezer

Snacks this week for DH are fruit and crisps, and I have tikka chicken breasts, tuna with pesto and mini soreen loaves

(Also, I can't wait for my burrito bowl from Tortilla! It's one of my favourite meals in the world!)

zcrat41

Burrito bowl sounds amazing. Is that a restaurant?

PennyJar

Hi MC,

Lovely meal plan - I'd pay £2.50 a meal for sure.

PennyJar

MissCreative

Thanks PennyJar
Sometimes we charge only £2 if it's a pretty cheap meal to create.

ZC, it's from a small chain called Tortilla. They do burritos, tacos, nachos and naked burrito bowls (burrito without the wrap). It's kind of like Subway, where you move along the counter picking what you want in your burrito/bowl - and it's sooo yummy! :j
Only £5 for a huge portion too

MissCreative

Spent £1.69 on a huge bag of ice yesterday for my breakfasts the rest of the week, and will also buy another soy or coconut milk tomorrow so that will be another £1.

I have the day off tomorrow, though it's likely to rain all day.
Thinking of walking the 2.4 miles to John Lewis to have a free hot drink and cake, then about 3.5 miles back as I'll run some errands in town. Depends on how heavy it's raining!
Better download a few podcasts just in case I go. I'm really enjoying The Minimalists podcast at the moment, as well as Girl Boss podcasts. May try a Hal Elrod one tomorrow though.

DH has run out of money - I knew he'd spend it all at the Audi Festival
Since I unexpectedly managed to squirrel away around £270 this month due to the spread sheet error I had, I'll probably transfer him a few pounds so he can enjoy this weekend with my sister and her boyfriend

MissCreative

Had an interesting meeting yesterday evening with the owners of the other 3 flats in my building.
We're looking at buying the freehold as it's come up for sale.
It seems like a good deal as it's £9,600, and with solicitor's fees and other costs its would be around £14,000 (£3,500 per flat).
Since we'd save about £750 a year on management company fees, ground rent and things like gardening and cleaning (never even seen a cleaner come by and am happy to do it myself!) we'd earn our money back in 4 or 5 years, and we intend to be there for about that long anyway.
Plus it would increase the appeal of our flat when selling.


So, that's £3,500 to find in the next few weeks...hmmm...


We have £2300 in the emergency/holiday fund so we could use a bit of that (but don't want to completely wipe it out in case of emergencies).
Instead of overpaying and saving next month we can pop £1300 towards the freehold purchase.
That leaves about £900 to find, though if it stretches out into October we'll have that month's overpayment of £1100 we could use for the freehold instead.
If it doesn't stretch out, bank of mum and dad have already offered some money, though I'm reluctant to take it as we already owe them a few thousand for our car.


It's a good opportunity, and one we're not going to let slip by, but I was really looking forward to going somewhere hot and sunny in October

MissCreative

I'm back! :j

Quick update:
We bought the freehold with the other 3 flats and it's going well so far. Our first annual service charge payment will be in October for only £400 - much better than the £1200 we were paying before.
We've overpaid by a total of over £7000 on our mortgage and got the term down from 30 years to just over 25 years.
We also managed to have a holiday in Dubai last month and have booked a mini-break near Plymouth for next month with friends, staying in a lodge with a hot tub!
Our friend is not buying meals from us anymore, but this also means I can save the leftovers for lunches and not have to cook so much.
His rent has also gone down from £475pm to £330pm.

Anyone else coming down from a chocolate high?
Got to get back to the healthiness this week after the Easter weekend. Though I did go on a 6.5 mile walk on Saturday and had a good swim session yesterday. Got to burn off all that creme egg rocky road!

I enjoyed putting my shopping and meal plans on here before, so I think I'll continue to do that
This week is:
Monday: beef and vegetable stir fry with brown rice
Tuesday: leftover beef stir fry / pizza night for DH
Wednesday: giant cod fishcakes with green beans and broccoli
Thursday: chicken and vegetable curry with brown rice
Friday: probably leftover curry

We were fortunate in that we picked up a whole chicken, 4 beef frying steaks and 2 giant cod fishcakes reduced to only £5ish.

Not sure on the weekend meals yet as we may be seeing friends.
Lunches are chicken and feta salads with leftover Easter nests.
DH is having kiwis and flapjacks as snacks, and I'm having kiwis, plus yogurt with granola and homemade rhubarb and apple compote.
(So much rhubarb from family and colleagues!)
My lunch on Thursday is being provided by work - always a bonus :T
DH's breakfast is generally toast with peanut butter and nutella, whilst mine switches between protein pancakes with blueberries or yogurt, granola and homemade compote. Once in a while I'll have porridge with nutella as a yummy treat

Next week I'll put an actual shopping list and meal breakdown for the week on here.

Anyway, hoping to overpay £500 this month, but I'm going to wait another week before putting it through just in case we need the money available for anything

allmannerofthings

Hi MC!

I'm very impressed with your food budget and meal plans, and will be following along for tips as I try to reduce mine!